Summer School: The next time you see one of those NCAA-builds-character TV image ads, keep Luke Hager and Glenn Hedden in mind.
Last month Hager, a 15-minutes-per-game sub, was thrown off the Division I UNC-Wilmington basketball team. He was told to take a hike, as his scholarship would not be renewed.
Hager had neither committed nor been accused of committing a crime. He hadn’t been arrested for beating his girlfriend, sexual assault, stealing laptops, possession of drugs or weapons or for being in a street hassle at 3 a.m. outside a nightclub.
He had created no, as coaches and broadcasters politely explain, “distractions.” It even seems Hager was a legit student-athlete, on schedule to graduate.
But in the sick, twisted world of college athletics, Hager was expendable, disposable. UNCW’s new head coach wanted/needed to make room for transfer players.
Although UNCW had been banned from postseason play due to consistently rotten academic achievement — how many Division I basketball programs could survive a close inspection? — Hager, as he told the Wilmington Star News, chose to stick it out: “I’ve been nothing but loyal to this program.”
And that was how the school and the NCAA showed him what that was worth.
And that’s what Luke Hager, business major, learned in college from college.
Last week, the former athletic director at Kean University — a public, taxpayer funded, NCAA Division III New Jersey institution — settled a wrongful termination suit. Hedden, Kean’s AD for 22 years and once its football coach, settled for $1.8 million.
Hedden was fired after pulling the alarm on Kean’s nationally ranked women’s basketball team and its coach, Michele Sharp, claiming the program was lousy with administration-approved academic fraud — including changing the grades of a star player to sustain her eligibility and the creation of bogus classes for athletes.
Instead of being thanked and even celebrated for doing what’s right — bringing corruption to the school’s attention — Hedden was sacked for not playing wink-and-a-nod ball.
This, keep in mind, all went down, and on taxpayers’ money, at an Division III college, where no TV money is at stake and such fraud is worthless, like cheating at solitaire.
The NCAA since has put all of Kean’s teams on probation, halfway through 2016. Coach Sharpe has left. To think that it all, including legal fees and Hedden’s settlement, would have been avoided had Kean chosen right over wrong.
Still, there is nothing so wrong with college sports that they couldn’t be fixed by several, well-placed nuclear warheads.
Everyone has their (David) Price
Sometimes, as Michael Kay races toward self-imposed peril, you want to holler, “Don’t open that door! Don’t open that door!” … but too late.
Tuesday on YES, with the Rays’ David Price pitching against the Yankees, Kay noted Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit — a home run — was thrown by Price.
Next, Kay set a trap — for himself. He told how Price made a deal to sign and sell baseballs attesting to the fact he had allowed Jeter’s 3,000th. Kay was bothered by that. It rubbed him the wrong way as a crass, greedy enterprise. Legit point.
He and Al Leiter glumly concluded that what money can do, money often does.
However, perhaps lost on Kay — but not his audience — was Kay’s hosting of a crass, classless private autograph-signing session with drug-enabled sluggers Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. Cost of admission: $7,500.
When Kay was knocked for lending his name, profession, position and reputation to such an ugly sell — one that would further enrich the wealthy and disreputable — he used his radio show to angrily respond that in this enterprise he would make more money in one night “than sportswriters make in a week!”
But that Price-Jeter autograph sell? Well, it bothered him, so much so that he opened it up for discussion during Tuesday’s game. Then he and Leiter concluded that it was all about quick, easy money — nothing more, nothing better.
Got stats? Cubs’ reliever Carlos Villanueva on Wednesday entered with a 6-3 lead, pitched two innings, allowed two hits, a walk and two earned runs. He was relieved by James Russell, who entered with a 8-5 lead, and in 1 ¹/₃ innings, allowed two hits and an earned run.
Villanueva got the win, Russell got his fourth “hold” in the Cubs’ 16-9 win over the Red Sox.
A place for everyone, everyone in their place: LB Rolando McClain, late of the Ravens and a former student-athlete at Alabama, last week signed with the Cowboys, “America’s Team.”
Although just 24, McClain, throughout his pro career, beginning with Oakland, has been “troubled” by the troubles he has caused. Fined and suspended for in-house and on-field misconduct as a Raider, since December 2011 he has been arrested three times — weapons, assault, false ID.
In 2012, he was sentenced to serve 45 days. He beat another rap when he reached a financial settlement with his victim. I know, I know: Perfect fit for ESPN!
Those who do little party big
Reader Bill Anton reminds us of one of Frank Cashen’s greatest public moments:
During the Mets’ clubhouse celebration following the ’86 World Series, Cashen was being interviewed on TV when reliever Randy Niemann, who had appeared in none of the seven games, hosed him in the face with champagne.
Through wincing eyes, he spotted his assailant, then, through clenched teeth growled, “Funny, how it’s always the guys who do the least who do the most spraying.”
Sure, it’s a matter of context, but still, to hear Ken Singleton on YES on Thursday casually say the Orioles Nelson Cruz this year had to “take a lot less money — he only got $8 million [for one season],” is not the kind of circumstance that inspires pity.
Local and national media continue to examine, bemoan and mock the Mets’ persistent failings without mentioning that it all began — and ended — with ownership’s no-questions-allowed, unrequited love affair with Bernie Madoff.
Now that ESPN has mentioned 15, 20 teams with which the NBA’s big-name free agents could sign, when those days come it can claim “as first reported by ESPN.” Meantime, I don’t know about you, but I’m not worried sick as to which team will be Carmelo Anthony’s next.
Reader Bruce Christoffersen notes the Yankees can’t blame their run-scoring woes on John Sterling. “He calls everything a home run.”